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| The New Meadow has not been a gay place for Pool |
I went on a lovely reflective walk today and was going to write a load of stuff about things and that but when I got in it turned out Armand is now a free agent. Armand! A free agent! And we need a striker! We don't score that many and super Armand scores goals! And he's fucking brilliant on his day. In fact, every day is Armand's day such is his Gallic indifference and glorious nonchalance. His all round fucking wonderful and woefully misunderstood genius. Sign him up. Death to the non-believers.
CJ Hamilton is pretty shit hot on his day, but this isn't it as he's not playing. The sometimes sublime, sometimes so subtle you forget he's there Sullay comes back in. I bloody love him however much he's the player to blame when it goes wrong. Dan Kemp starts, he has linked really well with Madine when I've seen them on the pitch together. Dan Ballard and Jordan Gabriel make a high class pair of incoming defenders along with a giant keeper on loan from Reading.
There's people in the ground, the crowd an ambient hum on a frozen evening with snow around the edge of the pitch.
Nothing happens in the first 8 minutes aside from what usually happens in an uneventful league 1 game. Some fouls, some jousting for possession and generally sizing each other up. Then Pool have a nice little spell, Jordan Gabriel striding confidently through the middle and setting Kemp up up for a shot which he hits straight at the keeper. Kemp then turns provider as he releases Gabriel wide, a move from which Pool win a corner. Garbutt swings it deep, through everyone. Then it's Madine, winning a long ball, controlling it and spotting the keeper out of position then from 35 yards, striking a volley that's not far away at all.
Gabriel misses a pass and the ball rolls out of play. The Shrews fans manage a weak cheer of derision through their chattering teeth. Moments later he makes another error as he tries to set Pool on their way, attempting but failing to turn his man and being forced to dive in a concede a free kick to prevent them capitalising on the moment. From the free kick, the ball goes in, comes out again, then goes back in - there's a right old scramble and Pool clear whilst the locals claim some sort of skulduggery.
There's something of the 1940s about this game. It's how I imagine wartime football to have been. A small crowd, icy pitch, the players breath steaming in the air. Everyone grateful for the escape of a game of football but a looming sense in the background that there's something else on the crowd and even the player's minds.
Ethan Robson is the next to make a double mistake, first presenting possession to the Shrews then conceding a needless free kick. They lift it in, Madine flicks it on, Garbutt knocks it down, great play but at the wrong end and again, it's Marvin who belts it away. Shrewsbury are asserting themselves and try to thread a pass through the middle, Ballard shows his class as he steps across and muscles the intended receiver out of the way, controls and clears to a Pool player.
The new keeper has looked sound. He's taken a couple of crosses very well then plucks a shot from the edge of the box out of the air, holding it impressively where others might have palmed it away. Shrewsbury come again, they put a lovely move together which is first repelled by a great Dan Ballard header at the far post then another sharp save from Walker when the tricky, stocky and skillful Daniel Udoh picks up the clearance and has a mazy run and shot.
Kemp teases his man wide on the right, he's going to skin him, but he doesn't, he just stands there then rolls the simplest ball across. It's so simple no one sees it coming and it nearly reaches Madine but for a lunge from a Shrews defender. It drops nicely for Anderson but he sees glory, leans back and hits it as high and wide as he can...
I might have said at the beginning that Sullay is magic but his tackle just inside the box really isn't. Whalley puts the ball past him and Kaikai just trips him, like a kid in a game on the rec where's there's no ref, pissed off that his mate has beaten him. It's a really poor tackle and clearly a penalty.
A low penalty to the right and Walker saves it, it bounces out and they lash it back at goal, Walker sprawls to his left and stops it again... it drops again to a Shrews player who tucks it away with barely a challenge on him. I think it's Udoh.
Pool huff and puff but can't put any meaningful pressure on. In fact, a Daniels free kick that whistles just past the post is close to making things worse...
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It's not been vintage stuff. Madine has looked isolated, Sullay and Keshi might as well not be playing. Shrewsbury look very well drilled and their organisation needs testing more than we've done so far. We need to give them more to think about up front. We're a goal down and whilst sometimes there's an argument for keeping your powder dry, plan A hasn't looked much like working tonight. Whilst Sullay has been poor, I'm leaving him on and taking Keshi off for Yates at least... (simply cos Sullay is better wide than Keshi. We'll see.
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Pool have a brighter start, Kaikai with a little shimmy and low cross that could have caused problems if we'd have got runners but we don't. Garbutt whips a free kick from 35 yards, it dips and the keeper sprawls and turns it round the post. The corner causes a bit of chaos. I wonder if you can have a bit of chaos - it's either chaotic or it's not surely. If chaos is an absence of order, then surely any measure of order means it's not chaos. What's the word for the point between 'order' and 'chaos' but that isn't described by either? Anyway, whilst I'm musing the ref blows for a foul on the keeper.
Shrews fans in the safe standing section bat some balloons around halfheartedly. Nothing like a party in subzero temperature during a major pandemic to lift the spirts.
Sullay wins a free kick wide, it's whipped across by Garbutt, there's half a chance at the far post but we fiddle around with it trying to work a perfect angle for a shot that is never going to come and they break like lightening. They're going up the left then switching it to the right, now turning it across for a snapshot that draws a quite fantastic stop from Walker, going down low to his left and saving his new team again.
Then here comes Critch's subs... It's obviously going to be Yates but it's also Mitchell, Ward and.... Turton. I can see the first three but Turton? Shrews make some changes of their own but I'm captivated by Steve Cotterill and his semaphore. He seems very keen to get the number four over to someone but it's like watching a frustrated dad playing charades, trying to convey the name of a film from thirty years ago to some teenagers who've never heard of it. Cotteril always reminds me of an angry leisure centre manager who used to be in the RAF. I can imagine him wearing a polo shirt with the name of the centre sewn in it and getting really cross at a kid who has put the wrong amount of chlorine in the pool or retreating to his office to take the order for the vending machine really seriously.
Dougall picks it up in midfield, one touch, two touches then a brilliant blind cross which Madine flicks, drawing a good save from the keeper. Turton puts a cross in, it's turned away for a corner, Garbutt swings it to the far post, Keshi comes in but the ball cannons off his ample thighs and just wide. There's a booking for a furious Gary Madine who, as the replay rolls looks to have been dragged to the ground. It's not been the goal machine's night.
Pool put some pressure on. Yates juggles it and tries an ambitious effort but it goes sideways instead of goalward, Turton overlaps put puts a lollypopped cross in instead of a driven ball. Both full backs are getting much further forward. There's another burst of instructions from Cotterill as they make a third sub. More defensive strength as it clear they're going to shut up and challenge us to break them down.
Madine cuts it back to Keshi, he strike a shot that looks nice when it leaves his foot, but he's way out and it's deflected wide. From the short corner, Dougall lifts it to the far post, Marvin is sliding in desperately but the ball is bouncing into to the snow behind the goal, the big man an inch away from having the key touch.
The pressure doesn't last and Shrewsbury assert themselves again, Critch goes for Bez, hoping his chaos (he is chaos) will unlock the game... Leon Clarke has come on for them and is doing a brilliant job of holding it up and linking play, looking like he's not even trying but winning everything. They take the piss in the corner for a bit till we finally win it back. Bez runs about a bit, Demi has a mad shot from a mile out. They take the piss some more in the other corner. There fans manage a semblance of a chant. Bez fouls someone. Demi runs about a bit. Pool launch one more attack, a tough tackle in midfield winning it, we're playing out the back, spreading out to Bez who will turn and run, but instead, he miscontrols it and lets the ball go out of play and that is basically that.
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A poor performance from Pool, who stripped of CJ looked lost for ideas. If last year we were too reliant on Feeney to Armand, there's not really a lot to say we're not over relient on CJ this season. He's the only player in the top 20 players in the division for both goals and assists. i.e. - our only player in either of the charts. Without his searing pace we looked lost and whilst Kemp ran about and Keshi crashed into people, neither of them looked like they could replicate his impact. Sullay runs hot and cold and was definitely cold tonight. I'll even accept it was his fault to a degree, which I normally don't. Madine didn't do a lot, Yates did very little when he came on. Bez at least showed for the ball but when your praising someone one for running about as opposed to having any discernible impact it's a sign your scraping the barrel a bit. The centre backs and especially Sam Walker being the pick of the players tells its own story, especially when Shrewsbury hardly threw the kitchen sink at us.
It mystifies me why Demi Mitchell gets sent on the right side - he's totally one footed and looks good when he races down his natural flank but completely out of his depth when running down the other, watching him trying to shift the ball on to his left foot when he's beaten someone is painful, yet on the left, he can go past someone and cross like a dream. Why not play him where he's clearly better and knows what he's doing? That extra touch is why I don't like playing players who aren't good at it as inside out wingers. That 'extra touch' is what defines Critchley's Pool when we're not very good. Shifting it sideways, one extra pass in the move, no one really taking the initiative.
I don't like the way every defeat has to be a sign that we need 5 new players and every victory means we're winning the league but this game exposed our weakness which ironically is the same weakness we had last year. A well organised and physical side who don't show huge ambition are beyond us. If someone comes at us and takes the game to us or tries to pass it about, we can play against them but like Accy the week before, we just had no answer to their well drilled defence.
Certainly a striker is needed, but I can't help thinking we also need to show a bit more guile and a bit more ambition going forward. What CJ does is go for the jugular, every time. He scares defences and Shrewsbury's defence were anything but scared because we really didn't go at them. We didn't drag them out of shape or force them into anything particularly last ditch. I don't really get irate about mistakes players make, they happen, but I do get frustrated with the overall attitude of a side and today, it was all too measured and too easy for Shrewsbury. Like we were waiting for something that never came.
Just like last year...
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*poe faced miserable doubters who express miserable sentiments about Armand like 'one good season' and 'doesn't fit into Critchley's style' and 'will you ever get over him, he's shite' or 'for fucks sake, he's not coming back we need to look at players like [insert name of form player here]' will not be entertained in the comments section and maybe encouraged to seek their after match reading in other blogs, which are readily available.
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